Saturday, 18 August 2012

Clouds over a country road, Cass County, Nebraska: photo by MONGO, 22 Junr 2007

Nebraska, my tennis shoes with no socks.
The porch light is left on, always. The deep ravines
are feathers. McCook. The river. Kearney.
The feathers that are ravines.
McCook, then Kearney. Then Hastings.
Further from the river. The feathers, the sand.
This is where the railroads crossed.
I wish I knew more. Sand-lined river.

Everywhere we lived
my grandfather was lying down flat there.
He was a bear in the Alaskan Wilderness.
He was a salmon.

I wish I knew more. This park.
There’s the lawn mower. It looks like
A small tractor. The utility plant.
There are the unreachable men.
This rich plain. The robins glimmer
on the lawn. In the grass. There are no places
in this history where my grandma doesn’t pretend
nothing has happened. My cousin’s breasts
look just like my grandma’s. I am burning
in the Nebraska sun. I think I feel the prairie.

Dismal River, Nebraska Sandhills. Taken while on the
river sampling for the plains topminnow: photo by Lindsay Vivian / USFWS, 28 October 2011

Nebraska Sandhills, Hooker County #1. Seen from Nebraska Highway 97 south of the Dismal River: photo by Ammodramus, 12 October 2010

Nebraska Sandhills, Hooker County #2. Seen from Nebraska Highway 97 south of the Dismal River: photo by Ammodramus, 12 October 2010

Nebraska Sandhills, Hooker County #3. Seen from Nebraska Highway 97 south of the Dismal River: photo by Ammodramus, 12 October 2010

Court House and Jail House Rocks, Nebraska: photo by Chris Light, 17 July 2007

Millions of acres. Iowa and Nebraska. Land for sale on 10 years credit
by the Burlington and Missouri River R. R. Co. at 6 per ct interest
and low prices: poster issued by Commercial Advertiser Printing House, Buffalo, New York, 1872
(Library of Congress)

"The Covered Wagon of the Great Western
Migration. 1886 in Loup Valley, Nebraska." A family poses with the wagon in
which they live and travel daily during their pursuit of a homestead: photographer unknown, 1886 (National Archives and Records Administration)

"Parade of U.S. Infantry through Kearney, Nebraska, 1888": photo by U.S. War Department. 1888 (National Archives and Records Administration)

We've been to the fens near Peterborough, visiting the inlaws. It's a strange place with skies that leave you feeling invisible and alive. But I'm like you, V: I don't know whether flat would suit me as a long term proposition.

"There are no places/ in this history where my grandma doesn’t pretend/ nothing has happened.

This line, between a here and a there, crackles, and the static coming off it throws me back.

My toe, my beast, it lifts up a cat, a flat of cauliflower.I’ve never had a Minneapolis dream, but isn’t that wherePrairie Home Companion steps in, isn’t that what happenshere, in a way, in the highlight, in the heavy loadox-like, of work, the mind gathering, the plowingplanting and watering, all along, the tip toeing around—it is almost a sort of tameness

was once a wild thing, once an involvedpose, those things needed, necessary.Their state, their hair and the way the lookism—o.k., the looks and looking. How it changes,it is all along and a spreading, growing.

They still thoughtThere was gold out in theFar reaches of this country,The Staked Plains, the regionOf Quivira, they had theirSuspicions and were somewhatMystified—there was gold somewhereBecause “they knew what the thing wasAnd had a name for it—acochis—“

The store isn’t a 7-11 but It used to be a gas station Now it’s only a store Minus the pumps.

Pedro de CastenedaTells about the monstrous cows encounteredBulls he calls them.

There are postcards of Canada and Alaska right beside the packages of gold tinsel I had to run to the store for. There are greetings written in cursive on the fronts of all the postcards. The cards shine lime green, velvet brown, they shimmer on the rack.

I chew, but cannot swallow this metal spaghetti as it flows from my mouth— drags, sounding like the clatter of shells across the linoleum— cracks and spaces filled with grease mixed with dust— I grab hearty handfuls, plastering the tangled tinsel

onto my head for hair and look around the store for a package of barretts that will manage & control my new mane. My eyes wide open and I crunch my torso first to the left and then to the right— my head swings and follows, my legs twitch, I make my way up the aisle, almost stepping in a soft round plate of steaming dung. There’s time to chew on the tinsel. It could have been cooked a little longer, served al dente.

“There is sort of a girdle round the middle of the body. The hair is very wooly, like A sheep, very fine, and in

It is cool, a small ditchunder some cedar hedges next to the house.Nobody knows I’m there—this is wherethe sour grass growsthat I eat. It is tangy and I seesparks fly out of my brainwhen I shut my eyes.

Later, when we moved to Nome,it was a place similarbut stuck on the side of a hill—Chicken Hill—where burrowing owlshunted at night and their wingsbrushed the tundra air right abovewhere I lay, waiting for the sunto go down—of course it never did,or for our dog Shumaginto come find me, bring me hometo our house across the creekwhere I wrote my own Nancy Drewsin shadow writing

listening again

for the gunshot from the neighborwoman—a suicide,and listening again for our baby sitter’sdrunk boyfriend snoring on the couchor for Mr. Peterson to come give me more 8 track tapes.

For Cathy Cabinboy’s mom to unfreeze,for Deena’s brother to empty the waterfrom his hip waders in the Kusitrin River,for little Rena to not be run over by the snowplow.

I am waiting, waiting in the bedroom in Missouri someone’s house where we stayed overand I drew on all the freshly painted walls—I am waiting, waiting for the animalsI drew to guide me, take me to a landwhere we all speak the same language,where their cries and calls form musicthat’s perfect, that’s enough as it is.

Call it just plain walking.Every step leads away fromand closer to the oceanup on the bluffs. The bluffs took giant stepsand the ocean marched gently, always.In the middle of the caliche forestI found some of my friendscovered in strange chalk.I did not shake their hands.

The moon is my friendcoated with feathers.That’s how I always wear my hairin Nebraska.like it’s dropped down from the air.The mashed potatoes in Nebraskaare like mountains. Forks climbto the tops and butter avalanchesdown to the small villagesnext to the canned peas.next to the gravy.Everything is near the meat.

When he was little he got cowboysand Indians and also a boywith a moon for a head,pineapple spikes for hair.He wanted joy and sustained surprise.That’s what he gotwith Moon Boy just by taking a look.

This made sense. My father,showing his teeth, genuine agates.His hair, wild, scraggly oaksand smooth corn husks. A scentrising off his clothes like buckskinand eagle feathers in the fancy dancehe did across the country.

It wasn’t as if he were lazybut he wanted the West to cometo him, only, instead, it passedthrough him and out the other side—through his body towards my mom, me, and my sisters swirling like satellites around a heavenly body.

No water, yet we were his crew,Sighting land for him. Land ho! (Nevada)Land ho! (Montana) Land ho! (Oregon). We were sturdy and had sea legs. Ate sardines, Pilot Bread, astronaut food.Army surplus rations and freeze-dried ice-cream from a can. We’d show offto our friends—hey, want a bowl of ice cream?and we’d come out with a bowl of pink or whitemarshmallow-like rocks that stuckto your teeth after one bite.The getting ready! Our little metal trunksheld all the toys and books for the next place.

My dad’s beard, his sunglasses. The real boathe had once in Missouri and how he drove itround and around in circles on a lake. Plus, the great trip he took to Mexicowith his brother to the Sea of Cortez& how they swam in the phosphorescent water& the raft trips when I was in high school& how Mom fell for the leader, John,a math professor, good with ropes.Oh, the sailing trips along the Oregon Coastand to Alaska. How my mom hated it

being stuck on a boat. How it was alright toobecause by then it did not matter.

It is summer. The wind is wildin the trees and in the bushes.I spot the places.My mother yodels on the bankof Dismal River. The song is partlyabout a well in a village neara certain mountain. There is wine and also a small bird.I see my mother’s long whitefoot touch the water. Everything is alive in the river.She watches me swim and singsmostly to listen for the echo.Her face is expressionlessas she concentrates onthrowing her voice up to the roofof her mouth.

Growing up in a place where an anthill would have passed for a mountain, the mere thought of peaks and valleys was enough to excite my imagination. There was a certain city street I liked because of the way cloud banks stacked up at one end of it. It was possible to close one eye, tilt the head a bit and imagine... mountain ranges.

Then came later years of living in mountains on several continents, and having to be walking up them.

And then still later came living in very high mountains, over 10,000 feet, up near where they made The Shining. And that was pristine and strange and in mid of winter (all eight months of it) weirdly spooky and deathlike.

Before we migrated up there from CA. (some 34 years ago now) the local acid shamaness approached me one day and said in a low voice, ominously and with curious dark portent, "Never move from a temperate zone to a high altitude".

I took that with a grain of nonchalance. (Always a bit dumb that way.)

Nebraska! My favorite Springsteen (next to "Trapped"). Fantastic collection of wonderfully vivid poems, Susan!Iowa is somewhat tamer, the railroad having breached it at least a decade sooner. Prairie to loess and plains. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burlington_and_Missouri_River_Railroad

I gravitated to the nearest mountains most of my life. At fourteen sent letters to Esso etc. stating that I was planning a world-wide tour of mountainous regions, requesting maps. Got a big batch for "free". Ironically, my son has been the world traveller and National Park Ranger.